Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59739 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59739 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
“Someone needs to stay with Adrian,” I point out. “If somehow they do come back to the ship, or they have some plan to take us out, we need someone here to help him. He isn’t able to move quickly enough.”
“I’ll stay,” Tati says, standing. “As long as I have guns, nobody is getting near this fucking ship.”
I raise my brows. “Damn, girl.”
Tati grins.
Aggie lays out all the guns Ace collected and left for us. She loads two rifles, one for me and one for Rachel. The stock is cold against my hands, but there’s a new kind of electricity buzzing inside me. Not fear, not exactly—more like purpose. Aggie shoves spare magazines into her belt. I set up Tati with guns and tell her to go find Adrian and stay with him. If they see anyone but us, shoot. No hesitation.
Once we’re ready, the three of us slip off the ship and slink into the dark. Aggie leads, then Rachel, and I follow behind. The jungle is incredibly dark and still, an eerie feeling lacing the air. We move quick and quiet, using the moonlight shining down over us to guide the way. We don’t talk. Even Rachel is silent, her usual anxious muttering replaced with a lethal focus. Aggie stops every few metres, checks the trees, then signals us forward with sharp little flicks of her fingers.
It’s slow going.
Every branch is a possible alarm, every shadow a booby trap. Twice we freeze when something moves in the brush, but it’s only some flightless bird, or a small rodent out hunting for leftovers. I keep thinking about Ace—and deep inside, I pray he’s still alive. I need him to be alive. This can’t be the way we go. It simply can’t. We have survived so much.
Aggie stops abruptly, dropping to a crouch. We follow quickly, squatting down. I can hear grunts and cursing, then a feral, guttural laugh—definitely not one of ours. I creep up next to Aggie, peering out through the gap in the trees to see what she is looking at. On the sand, just by the shore, we see figures. Pirates. They’re animals in human bodies, hairy and half-naked, their heads shaved, tattoos curling over every visible surface. One has a rifle, one a machete, and the third, who’s obviously in charge, holds a pistol pointed straight at the ground.
On the ground at their feet are Ace, Kellen, and Zeke, face down, wrists lashed at the back. I have to clamp my jaw to keep from making a noise. Zeke is moving a little, but Kellen looks completely still. Ace’s face is turned just enough that I can see his mouth working, like he’s spitting out threats. His eye catches the moon for a second, and his gaze sweeps the dark, searching for us, for anyone.
I stop breathing.
Seeing him there, like that, knowing that inside he is probably certain we have left. That’s what he told me to do, and yet now I can see him, the twist of fear and hurt on his face as he considers the possibility that this might really be the end for them, because he told me not to come back. It hurts, in a way I didn’t anticipate, seeing him look like that.
Did he really believe I wouldn’t come back for him?
Aggie leans in, her voice barely a whisper. “We need to hit them all at the same time. I’ll take left, you take the centre, Rachel gets the one on the right.”
“Wait,” Rachel whispers, then points. “There are four over there. Two pirates, and the two females. As soon as we shoot, they’re going to react.”
I crawl a little closer, staring. By the looks of it, the two pirates are unarmed. The only one holding a gun is the rough-looking woman who is standing over the younger girl, like she is ensuring she doesn’t go anywhere. Fuck. The second we pull the trigger, chaos will erupt. We have to be quick, precise, and if we miss...
“Fuck,” I whisper, turning back to them. “We have to be really careful here.”
“I think we take the three main men out, and then we cover each other and all of us aim at the other two. If the woman shoots, we take her out, too. If the three armed men are removed, we have the advantage,” Aggie says. “But we have to be really perfect with our shots.”
Rachel shifts, like she’s uncomfortable. “I’ve never shot anything. What if I miss?”
Aggie ponders it for a second, then pulls us further back into the brush, out of sight, and does a two-minute gun tutorial for Rachel in utter silence. How to take the safety up, line up the scope, squeeze not yank, just like she’s teaching a kid how to tie shoes, except the shoes are guns and the goal is to murder people before they murder you.